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Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

josephg.com

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Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#121

Post by throwaway2048 »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #97
anaisbetts wrote: post #74

Here's the thing. You know what the alternative to all of these Electron apps coming out is? If your answer is "A native Cocoa/WPF app", you are on another planet, the answer is, "It wouldn't exist at all". Nobody in the last 5-10 years cared about writing Desktop apps before Electron came along, there's basically zero money in it, and it's massively expensive, both in terms of actual dev time per feature (easily 10x…

That's nonsense . Desktop apps have been frequently released since forever. The underlying issue here is that Electron reduces the barrier to entry for cross-platform development . That is, it's cheaper to build a single cross-platform application in Electron than it is to build two or three native applications, and you can re-use your existing web experience. I can completely understand why companies might choose th…

In discussions like this its important to try to distinguish between a priori reasons and post hoc justifications.

The real reason that parties like slack and spotify choose electron is because its easy for the devs they have that only really know JS/HTML.

Its not that they couldnt hire more/different devs that could do it in a saner way, its not that its too expensive or that the ROI is not good, when we are talking about companies worth hundreds of millions to billions of dollars focusing on a core market, that is just completely laughable post hoc bullshit.

Its that they dont give a shit, either about the user experience, or improving their toolset. They are happy where they are, and see no reason to change.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#122

Post by calineczka »

boskonyc wrote: post #26

Why would a tech company not build its flagship product natively on the platforms where it runs? It seems like a generation drift: an obliviousness to the world outside of JS/web dev, and a general disregard for application performance.

Perhaps because it allows them to iterate faster if they don't?

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#123

Post by alkonaut »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #55
boskonyc wrote: post #26

Why would a tech company not build its flagship product natively on the platforms where it runs? It seems like a generation drift: an obliviousness to the world outside of JS/web dev, and a general disregard for application performance.

Put simply: time to market. Experienced front-end devs with a designer on hand could put together the UI inside of a day, with a workable user experience. Hell, if you're not afraid of bloating in the codebase, you could use a large number of libraries to put together a basic, working version inside of a day or two. Stretch that to a couple of weeks (at most) and you have a prototype you can release. The proof is in…

> Experienced front-end devs

That's the problem right there(?). People bringing a DOM to the desktop because the developers were fluent in JS.

> time to market

If there were no drawbacks in terms of complexity/performance/size etc then I'd agree, but now when you have a perf issue that is too large it might be a huge issue to fix. You also only get one chance for a first impression - and poor performance is a huge turnoff. Looking blingy and having all the features doesn't save an app with a 200ms lockup. or a 10% CPU at idle.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#124

Post by jonursenbach »

t1amat wrote: post #37
jonursenbach wrote: post #17

I don't understand the React Native comparison. AFAIK, you can't build desktop applications with that, nor can you build mobile applications with Electron like you can with React Native.

There is native support for Windows (from Microsoft), macOS, Ubuntu (from Canonical) in addition to the first party support for iOS and Android.

Ah, neat.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#126

Post by paraboul »

jmcdiesel wrote: post #105
paraboul wrote: post #14

FWIW, we're working on https://github.com/nidium/Nidium presicely to fix this. A new kind of browser engine, not based on any existing engine, allowing developers to use a subset of the web (webgl, 2d, layout) without being forced to use a bloated ecosystem (and which also works on mobile and low end device). Previous HN discussion : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314961

So another rendering engine to deal with inconsistencies?

It's not meant to support the Web. It's meant to bring app development to web developers. nidium will never be able to render regular web page.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#127

Post by pikzen »

anaisbetts wrote: post #74

Here's the thing. You know what the alternative to all of these Electron apps coming out is? If your answer is "A native Cocoa/WPF app", you are on another planet, the answer is, "It wouldn't exist at all". Nobody in the last 5-10 years cared about writing Desktop apps before Electron came along, there's basically zero money in it, and it's massively expensive, both in terms of actual dev time per feature (easily 10x…

>But now? People are making all kinds of great new apps, and more often than not, they come out on all three platforms. People are excited about the Desktop again - Electron is so good it's single-handedly revitalizing the platform that two of the largest tech companies in the world are behind, yet couldn't do.

>xpaulbettsx: JavaScript Hacker at Slack

Ah, yes, we are all grateful for Slack's 850MB of memory used when idle. I can live without it, personally. Actually, if it could crawl back into whatever hole it came from, I'd be glad.

Electron isn't good. Electron is absolutely awful. Web applications aren't good. Javascript isn't good. At what point of dementia do you say "hey, web APIs are easier to use, let's bring the entire damn browser along with it!"? The normal reaction should be fixing current APIs, making good wrappers around them.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#128

Post by matthewmacleod »

Etheryte wrote: post #114
matthewmacleod wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nonsense . Desktop apps have been frequently released since forever. The underlying issue here is that Electron reduces the barrier to entry for cross-platform development . That is, it's cheaper to build a single cross-platform application in Electron than it is to build two or three native applications, and you can re-use your existing web experience. I can completely understand why companies might choose th…

> The underlying issue here is that Electron reduces the barrier to entry for cross-platform development. It's very far-fetched to call a lower barrier to entry an issue. The easier we can make it for people to get started, the better, isn't it?

Point taken – 'issue' is not the correct term here. Perhaps 'cause' is better.

Lowering the barrier to entry is great, I agree. It's awesome that Electron and web technologies can be used to quickly launch proof-of-concept desktop apps. I find it significantly less awesome that companies with hundreds or thousands of engineers continue to use it after the concept has been proven, however!

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#129

Post by jhasse »

mijoharas wrote: post #70
lazarus101 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Development time needed to create desktop apps (for Windows, Mac and Linux) given that there's already an existing webapp: - using Electron: 1 month - using QT: 2 years

Chrome apps would have solved one of the main problems if they were still a thing (does anyone know why chrome deprecated them?). (by reusing the chrome context, your memory usage wouldn't grow unnecessarily for each new slack/spotify/whatever you open).

> does anyone know why chrome deprecated them?

To push Chrome OS (where they will still be available) and to vendor lock-in people with Android apps.

Re: Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)

#130

Post by TuringTest »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #97
anaisbetts wrote: post #74

Here's the thing. You know what the alternative to all of these Electron apps coming out is? If your answer is "A native Cocoa/WPF app", you are on another planet, the answer is, "It wouldn't exist at all". Nobody in the last 5-10 years cared about writing Desktop apps before Electron came along, there's basically zero money in it, and it's massively expensive, both in terms of actual dev time per feature (easily 10x…

That's nonsense . Desktop apps have been frequently released since forever. The underlying issue here is that Electron reduces the barrier to entry for cross-platform development . That is, it's cheaper to build a single cross-platform application in Electron than it is to build two or three native applications, and you can re-use your existing web experience. I can completely understand why companies might choose th…

If you basically agree with the parent post, why do you say it's nonsense?

> The underlying issue here is that Electron reduces the barrier to entry for cross-platform development. Precisely.

> The trade-off — and there is a trade-off — is that Electron applications are shite in comparison with proper native applications.

But native applications are shite in terms of portability.

> But let's be honest here – there is nothing preventing e.g. Spotify or Slack from building native clients for each platform they support

See the part where the original post said "it's massively expensive, both in terms of actual dev time per feature (easily 10x the cost), and also in finding specialist developers who know these dated technologies". The costs may not be "prohibitive", but they certainly would multiply effort and resources, and divide profit.

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